~ catching up... and some frank musings on why I am such a freak of nature...

It's been fairly busy around here since my last post... but nothing too crazy or hectic until this last week or two. No reason to get my panties in a bundle about it-- the end of school is just that way. The kids had their last day of school on Friday (June 12th) and of course in addition to all the regular insanity there was also end-of-school insanity, tie-dying-shirts-for-the-zoo-trip insanity, zoo-trip-with-all-the-first-graders along-with-my-two-2nd-grade-boys insanity... etc. These last couple of weeks have been busy and kind of stressful trying to get everything done that needed to get done-- but it was still a lot of FUN. The busyness included having a big list of things to do to prepare for our big road trip to Zion next week for the big Pugmire family reunion, including designing and getting shirts made. 

I’m still working on that list... 

Of course... all this... right before I was to give a 

talk at church on Sunday. Uh huh. 

Jonathan and I have been going to the temple every month, and this week I had to fight so hard to carve out some time for that in my schedule. I'm glad I did. Thankfully my talk was about temples, and the source of strength and power and revelation they can be to us-- a subject I have begun to feel very deeply about in the last seven months... so it wasn't like it was hard to have enough to write about. In fact, last night I had to have Jonathan 

help me whack a couple of pages off of it. 

Even so... maybe it was that I didn't edit enough off, or that when I read it to Jonathan last night I must have talked a lot faster, or maybe it was because we were in our BRAND NEW, beautiful stake center for the first time and there were lots of extra announcements, etc... AND there is not a clock in the chapel yet... but whatever the reasons... I apparently talked for so long that when I sat down, 

my jaw about hit the floor 

when the Bishop said we would dispense with the intermediate hymn and ask Brother Young to take a rain check on giving his talk!! It did NOT feel like I talked for that long. One of the young women in the ward Facebooked me tonight and said the look on my face was priceless... just hilarious! I felt so bad! All I can say is that I felt completely inspired to write what I wrote, and how I wrote it. I'm not kissing my own hiney here, but to me, at least, it looked like everyone was actually interested and paying attention the whole time. I checked to make sure I didn’t have my dress caught in my undewear before I left the bathroom, and I know there wasn’t anything unusually weird on my face, so I’m not sure why they were so alert. 

Did they install sensors on the benches in the new chapel 

that goose you if you start to doze off?? 

I do owe a lot to John Bytheway. He'd be proud of me, I hope... I think I did a pretty good imitation of him on "Righteous Warriors" doing the part about Amalickiah and Lehonti... "NO. We are FIXED in our minds with a DETERMINED resolution. We're NOT comin' down!" Sorry... guess you have to have heard his talks to understand his awesomeness. My kids love listening to him, so they were loving hearing me do that “bit.”  

Anyway... I haven’t read anyone’s blog lately or spent more than about 5 minutes on Facebook for quite a while, so tonight while Jonathan is on call and the kids are asleep, I have been poking around and trying to catch up with what folks are up to. I like getting to hear about and see little snippets of friends’ lives. 

It never ceases to amaze me how different we all are. 

And it still, after all this time, kind of surprises me that I feel like 

I am such a freak of nature 

comparatively speaking. I feel comfortable in my own skin, but I just don’t... fit in very well, I guess. Maybe part of it is that I’m not that domestic-- or at least not very Martha-ish. Or stylish. I wear jeans most of the time. Not cute trendy ones. Boot-cut girl Wranglers with a leather belt that has barbed wire carved into it. 

I’m happy to keep my hair long (and my God-given color) for my husband, at his request, instead of short and colored and cute, and when he’s not around, most of the time it’s in a ponytail. 

I think manicures and pedicures are a waste of time and money. 

I don’t like to shop for clothes. Or shoes. Or makeup. Or scrapbooking stuff. Or things to decorate my house. 

I make my kids do chores. 

Serious chores, like vacuuming up the mountains of dog hair that appear overnight, and putting away their own laundry. (*gasp!*) 

And they don’t complain about it. (*double gasp!*) 

It boggles my mind 

and makes me want to bang my head against the wall 

when people talk about reality shows, 

when they make lame excuses for the garbage in their life, 

and when they don’t set limits for their children. 

We don’t have a Wii or Guitar Hero, and we won’t. 

We read scriptures together as a family almost every single night. 

And we all like it. 

We have to take turns saying family prayer because all three kids always want to say it. 

I daydream about being at the barn. 

I got ridiculously giddy and weak in the knees this week when my new little buckskin mare yawned-- as in multiple yawns, three separate times, twice before I even got on her. (The ultimate in knowing that your horse is relaxing, letting down and trusting you, and letting go of those nervous butterflies that were in her tummy... which is HUGE for this little mare, who was SO uptight and nervous when I got her just a couple of months ago. You Martha girls whom I adore-- try to equate that to some sort of decorating or scrapbooking or haircut Nirvana to understand my joy at that).

 

I don’t read anything anymore that isn’t REAL. 

I don’t watch TV. I don’t turn on the radio anymore. 

I listen to good music-- clean music, 

occasionally watch super clean movies, 

and we laugh ourselves silly watching 

Jim Gaffigan and Brian Regan DVDs. 

My biggest dilemmas right now are trying to figure out where I can find a child-size, good quality Wade-tree saddle for my kids, and trying to decide if I should turn the front part of my garden shed into a chicken coop or try to build one myself. 

I’m opinionated 

(not blindly, but with wisdom from from qualified experts to back it up) 

and I sometimes try to share those opinions with others thinking that they will be just as open to them as I am open to other peoples’ opinions... 

and then realize later that a lot of people can’t deal with that. 

I’d rather have someone tell me something straight up than lie to me because they don’t want to hurt my feelings. 

I read comments on other peoples’ blogs and realize that most people really do sugar-coat things instead of being frank with their friends. And that bothers me. I don’t like it when people justify actions that they KNOW are lame. 

I’m grateful for the few friends in my life who, when I was being the dumbest I ever was, 

loved me enough to smack me upside the head and say 

“knock it off.” 

I want to do that for other people on occasion, and then realize very quickly-- thankfully, usually before I actually say anything impactful--  that they can’t handle the truth. 

I struggle with wanting to stand strongly for the principles and values and things I believe in, without coming off as intolerant. 

I am happy, and I want, so much, for other people to be happy. 

It’s frustrating to be able to see at least a few of the simple things that if they changed, would make a major difference in them being 

truly happy in their lives. 

I’m grateful that I’m married to such an unbelievably good man, who isn’t afraid to tell me the truth, but who loves me so much that there is never any doubt of that love, and likes me so much that there is never any doubt of his acceptance of who I am. 

Maybe that’s the key. 

Maybe I can handle the truth from him because I know he still loves me and esteems me above all others, no matter what. 

Maybe I need to make sure my friends know that 

I will love them and accept them, too--

no matter what. 

But I’m also learning that you really do have to let people make their own mistakes. That you can’t even lead a horse to water. 

They have to be thirsty enough on their own to seek it out,

 before they’ll drink it.